Tag: cloth diapers

My oldest child is about to turn 4, and his birthday always makes me reflect on all I’ve learned in these few short years of motherhood. One of my favorite parenting decisions we made was the choice to use cloth diapers. We have saved thousands of dollars using cloth diapers for our kids, and have kept tons of waste out of landfills. Besides the obvious economic and environment benefits, cloth diapers are super cute and great for my babies’ sensitive skin. Today I’m sharing my best cloth diapering advice after 4 hard fought years in the trenches so you can learn from my mistakes.

Summer is in full swing and we are basically living in the pool. Our Pearl Girl is a total water baby and wants to kick and splash just like her big brother. We have a few specific cloth swim diapers for her to use, but I want to let you in on a little secret I learned with the Bear. Almost ANY cloth diaper can work as a swim diaper. It’s true! We have used Bummis, Bumgenius, and Softbums shells as swim diapers and they all work perfectly.

After almost three years using cloth diapers on two children, I’ve learned a lot. We’ve tried 14 different kinds of cloth diapers and found our very favorites. You can read my post about what I learned the first two years here, and my great cloth diaper trials here. Read about our cloth laundry routine here. Our cloth diaper preferences and routines have evolved as we’ve adjusted to two kids, potty trained the Bear, and moved in to a new house. Today I’m sharing our favorite diapers, our simple laundry process, and my favorite things about cloth diapers.

We are now almost 2 years into this little cloth diaper experiment. I’ve learned so much and am still picking up new info every week. I’ll probably get the whole thing totally mastered by the time Mini Bear potty trains. Today I’m sharing with you the top five things I’ve learned from our first 20+ months of using cloth.

1. Diapers We Love:
If you read our about Great Cloth Diaper Trials you know that we’ve tried and tested 11 different kinds of cloth diapers. We are now up to 14. Out of control. Not all of the brands we tried worked for us, but we do have a few that we absolutely love and we are always looking to try more. Our all time favorite brand is Softbums. We’re obsessed and they make up the bulk of our diaper stash. We also love the Bumgenius 4.0 and Freetime. We use our Bumgenius Elemental, but the drying time takes it from a love to a like. I love Apple Cheeks diapers, but Jed is not as big of a fan. I loved the 1 size two AC we had so hard the elastic is now busted. Anyone want to fix it for me? We love our Bummis swim diaper, and our Bunzuke bandana diaper is still in the rotation as well. That Bunzuke is so cute and hard to find I will never give it up. The rest we’ve sold. Which brings me to #2.

2. The Cloth Diaper World:
Did you know there is a whole underground world of cloth diaper people out there? We DO exist. There are Buy/Sell/Trade groups and fan pages on Facebook for every major brand. There are local cloth diaper swaps. There are forums where you can learn everything you every wanted to know about every diaper on the market. I’ve sold all of our used cloth diapers we didn’t love because they work really well for other people. I’ve bought used diapers from people who didn’t like our favorite brands. There are cloth diaper meet ups and mom groups in most major cities. The cloth diaper world is amazing, and I love being part of it. Before we started this experiment, I looked to blogs to learn everything I could. That’s why I now post about what I’ve learned to share with you.

3. The Laundry:
The cloth diaper laundry is no longer intimidating. You can read about our original simple cloth diaper laundry routine here. We just switched to Rockin Green detergent because of a hard water issue at the new house. Our new routine is one cold wash, one hot wash, extra rinse. We use 1 TBSP of Rockin Green in both cycles. That’s it. Then we hang the dipes up to dry and dry the pods and inserts on low. We now have the routine down pretty well and do a load every other day and never run out, even giving the diapers overnight to dry.

4. Over Night Cloth Solutions:
We struggled with this for a LONG time. Bear is a super heavy wetter and I thought we would never find the right fix. Bear would literally explode an over night disposable diaper, but we couldn’t find a cloth solution that worked either. Finally after begging for help from Twitter and Facebook friends as well as in cloth diaper forums, and visiting my two local shops, we have found a solution that works for our super heavy wetter. We use a waterproof cover (Rumparooz and Tiny Tush), two Grovia bamboo prefolds with one of them folded in half towards the front, two microfiber inserts (one in half towards the front and one flat on top of everything else), and two fleece liners covering the microfiber. It makes the fluffiest booty you’ve ever seen, but it works.

5. Cloth Diapering Really is Easy, Cheap, and Doable
It’s true. Maybe not for everyone, but it is true for me. I had many doubters when I first started talking about cloth, but thankfully I’m stubborn enough to prove them wrong. If you are interested in using cloth diapers, do your research and go for it. Don’t buy all one brand though, because that brand might not work for your babe. There are a few specific things that have made it easier on me as we have gone on. Our diaper sprayer is magnificent. We bought the Bumgenius diaper sprayer and have it attached to the toilet in one of our bathrooms. We keep our diaper pail beside it and after the dipes get sprayed they go straight into the potty. Totally easy. We use a simple Ikea pail with a lid. The other thing that makes it easier is having a bigger stash. We wash every other day and let them dry overnight, and still have enough to make it through. It just makes my life better if I’m not doing laundry every day, and is totally worth the investment. You can do this. If you want to. You will save around $2000 per kid and thousands of disposable diapers from the landfill (which don’t biodegrade for over 500 years!). I believe it’s worth it.

Do you use cloth diapers? If so, what’s one thing you’ve learned from cloth diapering?

One of the most intimidating things about cloth diapering a child is the actual washing of the diapers. There’s a different routine for every cloth diapering family, but I’ll share the super easy routine that works for us. We tried and tested 11 different types of cloth diapers and you can read about that by clicking the link.

Here we go. We need a few items for our routine, besides the obligatory washing machine. We use a plastic bucket from Ikea with a lid, bumGenius Diaper Sprayer, and Country Save detergent.

Step One: After The Bear soils a diaper, we spray it off in the toilet with the diaper sprayer. We spray both poop and pee diapers, to help get the ammonia stink out of the cloth. The diaper then goes into the bucket, and the lid stays on til we are ready to wash.

Step Two: We wash our cloth diapers every other day. I turn on the washer on the heavy duty cycle with cold water, and let the water begin to fill. I add 1/4-1/3 the amount of Country Save detergent I would use for a normal load. I toss the diapers in, making sure the velcro tabs are closed so they don’t get crazy in the wash. Close the lid and run that sucker.

Step Three: After the cold wash finishes, I turn the dial back to heavy duty wash, but this time in hot water, with no detergent. Run it.

Step Four: We pull out the diapers and hang them on the clothesline if it is nice out or from the shower curtain if it is rainy.

And we’re done. We’ve learned a few things over this year+ of cloth diapering. Never soak your diapers because it damages the waterproof liner. Always double check your velcro/hook and loop. Don’t be afraid to start using cloth diapers. You CAN do it.

When we made the decision to use cloth diapers, I had no idea where to start. I started reading every blog and website I could find that had information to help me. I entered lots of diaper giveaways and won a few. I asked the few friends I knew who had tried cloth. There are so many options out there, and it was hard to know where to start.

Here the Bear is modeling his SoftBums Hot Diggity Dog Diaper. Does it have wiener dogs on it? Why yes, yes it does.

If you had asked me 5 years ago if I would ever use cloth diapers, I would have looked at you like you were crazy and said “Not possible.” Now we are 9 months in and loving our choice. If you are an expectant mama or want to have kids (or more kids) someday, I hope you will read on and consider cloth diapers. Why did we choose cloth diapers? There are so many reasons.

1) Cost

Here’s a calculator that will show you exactly how much you can save using cloth diapers, including cost of water, detergent, etc. We broke even after about 4 months and will save well over $1000 after 18 months. If we continue to use our cloth diapers with future children, the savings increase exponentially. The average savings per child are between $1500-2000. Nice. Hello, starter college fund. We went with one size diapers, and love some of the more expensive brands. We could have saved even more using prefolds, but we couldn’t get on board with them. We love the ease of use of our one size diapers and were willing to pay a little more initially. Our favorite brands are Soft Bums, Apple Cheeks, and BumGenius. I will explain our cloth diaper trials in a post coming next week.

2) Environmental Impact

Did you know that each baby using disposable diapers creates about a ton of landfill diaper trash during their diaper years? It’s true. Disposable diapers create over 3.6 MILLION TONS of landfill trash per year. HOLY CRAP. Literally. Some folks argue that the additional energy used to launder cloth diapers negate the environmental positives. Not true. We do maybe 3 more loads of laundry per week than we used to do. We line dry our diapers whenever possible, so that saves on some energy usage.

3) Safer for Baby

Disposable diapers contain so many chemicals, synthetics, and toxins (like dioxin) that I would rather avoid putting next to my Little Bear’s skin. We have to use disposables occasionally (for Mother’s Day Out, church nursery, MOPS, etc) and know that when we do he is prone to get diaper rash. He never gets it from his cloth diapers.

4) Functionality

Cloth diapers work better than disposable. Really. We have had very few leaks or blowouts with our cloth diapers, really almost none. Disposables are a whole other messy story.

5) Cuteness

Cloth diapers are just so cute. Seriously. They come in a million fun patterns and colors and you can match every outfit. So fun.

Meet Becca of BFOTD

Becca is a follower of Jesus, wife to Jed, and mama of two wee ones. She loves creating, traveling, being frugal and adventurous, and blogging about it all. She is based in Dallas, Texas. Email her at barefeetonthedashboardATgmailDOTcom for more information.